The Boundless
The 'boundless' — a limitless, formless stuff with no fixed qualities, from which Anaximander said every definite thing is spun off and back into.
The apeiron is Anaximander of Miletus's answer (early 6th c. BCE) to the question of what everything ultimately comes from: not water or any familiar substance, but something infinite and indefinite, with no boundaries and no single character. From it the opposites — hot and cold, wet and dry — separate out to form the world, and into it they perish again, 'paying the penalty' to one another in time. As perhaps the first truly abstract first principle in Western thought, it marks the turn from myth toward reasoned cosmology.
How it traveled
- PhilebusAthens · -355explains
- MetaphysicsChalcis · -322explains
- PhysicaChalcis · -322explains
- De Xenophane, de Zenone, de GorgiaChalcis · -322explains
- De caeloChalcis · -322explains
- Fragmenta variaAthens · -287explains
- Epistula ad HerodotumAthens · -270explains
- De Defectu OraculorumChaeronea · 120explains
- Adversus MathematicosAlexandria · 190explains
- Pyrrhoniae HypotyposesAlexandria · 210explains
- Vitae philosophorum— · 240explains
- EnneadesRome · 270explains
- Praeparatio Evangelica—explains
- Fragmenta Logica et PhysicaAthensexplains
- Refutatio Omnium Haeresium (= Philosophumena)—explains
- Homiliae [Sp.]—explains
Key passages(20)
In Aristotelis Physica Paraphrasis · Themistius
Homiliae [Sp.] · Clemens Romanus (Clement of Rome)
Vitae philosophorum · Diogenes Laertius
Praeparatio Evangelica · Eusebius of Caesarea
Praeparatio Evangelica · Eusebius of Caesarea
Refutatio Omnium Haeresium (= Philosophumena) · Hippolytus
Hymn to the Mother of the Gods · Julian, Emperor of Rome
Quaestionum Homericanum ad Iliadem pertinentium reliquiae · Porphyrius